Loving Our Neighbor: Statement on Caring for Refugees

Before chapel on January 31, 2017, Mark L. Bailey, president of DTS and professor of Bible Exposition, read the following statement:

On our Statue of Liberty, it is inscribed,

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Through the media we see the tensions between the vigilance of maintaining security to protect people from evildoers and the value of extending compassion to those who desire to come to our country for a better life of worship and opportunity. It should go without saying, not all refugees are illegal immigrants.

Many of our students attend DTS on student visas, and many faithful people support them to study here. Some of our students also work in ministries that specialize in extending care to refugees. As the president of Dallas Theological Seminary, I want to encourage you to support and pray for our international student body and for the students, staff, faculty, and alumni who minister to the refugee community, and the affected refugee families.

We hold to the principles that countries have the right to define and secure their borders, and yet God also wants us to care for the alien and strangers in our midst. They too bear the image of God. We believe we can uphold the laws of the land and also bring the hope of the Gospel to those we find along the way regardless of their plight. We live within the real tensions of compliance and compassion–maintaining security and ministering with sympathy.

For more information on how to get involved in serving the refugee community, please visit any of the following resources:

• International Justice Mission
• Amnesty International
• Love is Ministry (started by Danny Domingo (ThM 2013); Dallas based)
• Vickery Trading Company (started by Stephanie Giddens (ThM, 2009); Dallas based)
• Seek the Peace (Dallas based)
• Refugee ministries at Park Cities Presbyterian Church, Northwest Bible Church, The Village, Watermark

Part of our mission at Dallas Theological Seminary is to equip the body of Christ and that isn’t strictly limited to our students. Below are several resources from the DTS family discussing immigration and the Christian’s role. We offer these resources as an avenue to help us all think more clearly about these very real tensions.

• Thinking Theologically about Immigration – Dr. Alex Mandes
• Good Migrations: Q&A on Immigration – Dr. Mike Pocock
• Responding to Syria's Refugee Crisis: Profile of Nabeeh Abbassi
• Immigration and the Bible – Darrell Bock and Daniel Carroll